New Poster for November Castalia

created by Jean Burnet

Get ready for November Castalia, ya'll, as we head into another month of great readings featuring UW MFA students and friends.  This month features first year poet Luke Laubhan, first year prose writer Tara Atkinson, and second year poet Peter Moench. This month we're lucky enough to have two featured alumni readers, poet Amanda Laughtland whose first book of poems Postcards to Box 464 was recently published by Bootstrap Press, and prose writer Marcia Woodard, whose first book Collected Kona: Brief Takes on a Basenji was runner-up for the Association of Purebred Dog Writers Book of the Year award for 2010. Closing out the evening will be UW professor Andrew Feld, whose accomplishments include a Stegner Fellowship, the Nation Award, and two Pushcart Prizes.  He is the author of Citizen, a 2003 National Poetry Series selection, and in addition to teaching at the UW, he is the poetry editor at the Seattle Review.

October Castalia Recap

On October 17th we kicked off the Castalia season with some great readings: first year prose writer, Darren Davis meditated on woodpeckers and heartbreak; first year poet Rich Smith gave us a few laughs along moments of insight with his musings on fathers; and second year prose writer Paul Vega's fisherman's tale carried us all away to Alaska. Visiting alum Daniel Orozco read from his collection of stories, giving us a wonderful interpretation of a blind date and an ethical dilemma, and UW's own Maya Sonenberg allowed the audience to participate in choosing her readings. She read a linked haiku and a five paragraph essay, featuring the themes of nature, motherhood and the motifs of fairytales.

Castalia Audio: October 2011

October Castalia Photos!

Castalia is back!

Don’t miss the first Castalia of the 2011-2012 year! The October event will feature a number of great readers including UW Professor Maya Sonenberg, whose first collection of stories, Cartographies, won the Drue Heinz Prize. Her second, Voices from the Blue Hotel, was published in 2007, and some of her recent work has appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Web Conjunctions, New Ohio Review, and Hotel Amerika. Also reading will be UW MFA alum Daniel Orozco, who has been published in a bevy of anthologies and journals including Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize anthologies as well as in Harper’s Magazine and McSweeney’s among others. The series will also highlight current MFA candidates, including 2nd year fiction writer Paul Vega, recently returned from the wilds of Alaska, 1st year prose writer Darren Davis and 1st year poet Rich Smith.

WHEN: Monday*, October 17, 8 pm.
WHERE: Richard Hugo House, 1634 Eleventh Avenue

Free and open to the public!

The reading series will once again be held at Hugo House on Capitol Hill, which features a stylish cafe with a good variety of beverages and very good prices.

Books will be available for sale with proceeds going to support the reading series, so bring some cash if you don't want the night to end.

*Note: While this month’s Castalia is on a Monday night, all other Castalia readings will be on the first Tuesday of each month.

May Castalia Audio

Our final Castalia of the year! It went by so fast and luckily, we went out with a bang. Thanks to everyone who read and shared their work over the past season! First-year fiction writer Paul Vega began the May reading with a fiction piece about a man and his drug-addled ex-wife; second-year poet Jessica Tyson, inspired by life in the restaurant biz, empathized with the plight of an octopus dipped in marinara sauce; first-year fiction writer Jean Burnet read a nonfiction piece about her family and paid homage to her Ecuadorian roots; during the intermission, audience members worked on erasure poems based on the bios of the night's readers; poet and UW alum Jason Whitmarsh doled out the advice of "If you're going to kiss a vampire, you shouldn't kiss a vampire"; the night ended with poet Cody Walker, who informed the audience of the fate of Abbott and Costello.